Major US firm SPX Corporation chooses city for pan-European Shared Service Centre

MIDAS, Manchester’s inward investment agency and the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) have secured approximately 160 jobs for the City Region.

SPX Corporation, a US-based multi-industry manufacturing group with operations worldwide, has chosen Manchester as the location for a major Shared Service Centre (SSC) for its pan-European operations.

Confirmation of the exact location of the SSC is due to be announced before the end of 2009.

SPX selected Manchester after working with MIDAS, the Manchester office of property agents CBRE and other key agencies such as the North West Regional Development Agency (NWDA).

The business was attracted to the City Region because it is home to a large cluster of other SSCs including those operated by Marks & Spencer and Sainsbury’s, with a large pool of relevant talent and because MIDAS was able to introduce SPX executives to senior SSC leaders via the North West Shared Services Forum.

Other key factors which brought SPX to the City Region included:

The high quality of Greater Manchester’s labour force;

The wide range of language skills in a multi-lingual population – because staff at the SSC will work in 12 languages including English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Polish and Russian;

Availability of high quality, reasonably priced real estate;

Manchester Airport’s international routes – including direct connections to the US and major European cities where SPX has a presence.

The SPX Shared Services Centre is due to open in the second quarter of 2010 and will specialise in human resources, finance, payroll and other key support services for SPX’s operations in 18 European countries.

Mary Sczudlo, vice-president, chief financial officer for Global Shared Services at SPX, said: “To improve the efficiency and effectiveness of SPX worldwide we developed a plan to establish regional SSCs around the world. A centre was established in Shanghai and the next stage of the plan is to deliver a SSC for Europe.

“MIDAS and NWDA proved to us that Manchester has everything we need to make the SSC a success – the location, the infrastructure with excellent transport connectivity overseas and most importantly, the existing SSCs and highly impressive talent pool.”

Rachel Green, head of business development at MIDAS who led the team working with SPX, said: “The arrival of the SPX SSC shows that Manchester is competing with and beating other major cities throughout Europe and indeed worldwide for such projects.

“Greater Manchester is increasingly being shortlisted for this type of pan-European operation because we have a proven offering that ticks all the boxes.”

Mark Hughes, Executive Director for Economic Development at the NWDA, said: “This year the UKTI revealed that the number of inward investment projects secured in the Northwest over the last financial year had risen to the highest recorded number for the region, despite the difficult economic conditions.

“Securing significant investments from US companies such as SPX is key to building on this success. Foreign Investment plays a very important part in the Northwest economy with over 17% of our economic power (GVA) is accounted for by foreign owned companies operating in the Northwest.”

SPX, headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina and listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), specialises in the provision of flow technology, test and measurement services, thermal equipment and services and industrial products and services. The business has employees in more than 40 countries.